Chapter 6 - The Panic Room
Lorenzo slammed on the heavy brakes of the armored SUV, the massive tires screaming violently against the wet asphalt of the harbor road.
He stared at the glowing screen of his encrypted phone, his mind entirely unable to process how Vivien had managed to escape Rocco’s brutal bindings.
Vivien’s voice echoed chillingly through the vehicle's speakers, heavily mocking Lorenzo for underestimating the sheer resourcefulness of a high-society heiress.
She proudly revealed that she had secretly bribed one of the estate’s newly hired security guards weeks ago, entirely just in case her brilliant plan ever went sideways.
The guard had completely freed her from the wine cellar and then forcefully helped her completely bypass the complex biometric locks on the underground panic room.
Vivien cheerfully informed Lorenzo that she currently had Elena and Mia sitting perfectly quietly on the floor at gunpoint.
She demanded that Lorenzo immediately call off his aggressive counter-attack at the docks and officially hand over the entire Duca empire to her father.
If he refused to completely surrender within the next ten minutes, she promised absolutely to fulfill the terrifying threat she had made to the little girl yesterday afternoon.
Lorenzo felt a deeply agonizing, completely paralyzing terror grip his heart, a terrifying emotion he hadn't experienced since he was a helpless child.
He looked over at Rocco, who was already aggressively throwing the heavy armored vehicle violently into reverse, absolutely prepared to speed directly back to the sprawling estate.
But Lorenzo raised a trembling hand, forcefully ordering his trusted lieutenant to completely stop the massive, roaring vehicle.
He knew absolutely that driving back to the estate would take at least twenty minutes, entirely too long to save the terrified mother and child.
He needed to completely outsmart a highly manipulative psychopath who held all the immediate, lethal cards in her perfectly manicured hands.
Lorenzo took a deep, highly controlled breath, intentionally shifting his tone to project an incredibly cold, utterly terrifying indifference over the phone line.
He coldly told Vivien that she had completely miscalculated the absolute depths of his legendary ruthlessness.
He lied smoothly, stating loudly that Elena and Mia were completely expendable, mere collateral damage in the grand, violent scheme of his massive criminal empire.
He dared Vivien to pull the trigger, claiming confidently that her father's mercenaries at the docks would all be completely slaughtered before she even heard the gunshot.
There was a long, incredibly tense, entirely deafening silence on the other end of the encrypted line as Vivien frantically processed the highly unexpected, brutal response.
She had deeply banked on Lorenzo’s highly guarded sense of honor and his hidden soft spot for the innocent child to completely force his surrender.
Lorenzo seized her momentary, confused hesitation, rapidly texting a deeply encrypted, highly complex sequence of numbers on a secondary burner phone hidden in his tactical vest.
He was remotely accessing the estate’s highly advanced, heavily classified internal security countermeasures.
Suddenly, Vivien screamed loudly through the phone, a sound of pure, unadulterated panic as the panic room’s emergency suppression system violently activated.
Thick, blinding, non-lethal halon gas began rapidly flooding the sealed underground room, completely neutralizing the available oxygen in a matter of seconds.
Lorenzo knew the heavy gas would quickly render everyone inside completely unconscious, temporarily saving Mia and Elena from Vivien’s lethal weapon.
But as he aggressively ordered Rocco to floor the gas pedal and race frantically back to the estate, a massive, deafening explosion violently rocked the harbor behind them.
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Lorenzo looked in the rearview mirror and saw a towering, deeply terrifying pillar of bright orange fire completely consuming the southern pier.
His brother, Marco, had completely ignored his direct orders and independently initiated Protocol Omega, violently sacrificing the captured Duca men to entirely destroy the Hail mercenaries.
